The New York Times, May 21, 1860
From the Associated Press.
WASHINGTON, Saturday, May 19.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS: Concurring with you fully in the great principles which have united us in political association, I am pleased to meet you on this occasion; and I unite my voice with yours most cordially in a tribute to a common cause. You have assembled to congratulate each other upon the doings of our recent Convention at Chicago, the result of which has come to us over the telegraphic wires. Of that position which has been assigned to me, you will allow me to say, that while I feel profoundly grateful for the honor it confers, and am duly sensible of the obligations it imposes, it was neither sought, expected, nor even desired. But as it has come unsolicited, it leaves me no alternative but to accept the responsibilities which attach to it, with an earnest hope and endeavor, that a cause more important than any man, will receive no detriment at my hands. But you have come to pay a tribute to our standard bearer, who has been taken from the Great West, where the star of empire is culminating, if it has not already culminated; a man of comprehensive and vigorous intellect, and fully equal to the position designated. The architect of his own fortune, he comes to us most emphatically a representative man; not only a representative man as an able and earnest exponent of Republican principles, but as identified with the laboring and industrial classes. Having from early life, to the maturity of manhood, devoted himself to physical labor, he can, as he does, but feel a keener sense of the rights of labor. He stands before the country, too, with a high moral character, upon which even a suspicion was never breathed, and with a political integrity above reproach. The objects desired by the Republicans in the pending election, and the obligations imposed upon our candidate, are, to bring back the Government to the principles and practices of its fathers and founders, and to administer it in the light of their wisdom and example; to aid our commerce, to send it out upon distant seas, and to prepare for it havens in its distress and on its return; to infuse new life and energy into all the productive and industrial pursuits of the whole country — for we must not forget that the prosperity of every country must repose upon productive industry. Labor it is, and labor alone, that builds and navigates our ships, delves in our mines, makes music in the workshops, clears away the forest, and makes the hillside blossom as the rose. It maintains our Government and upholds the world in its prosperity and advancement. Surely then, it should challenge and demand its rights of the Government it thus sustains. To preserve the integrity of the Union, with the full and just rights of all the States, the States themselves not interfering with the principles of Liberty and Humanity in the territories of the United States, outside their own jurisdiction, and to preserve our original territorial domain for the homesteads of the free: — these are the great principles which we have united to sustain and advance. That done, our Government will remain a blessing to all, and our country a refuge in which the man of every creed and every clime may enjoy the securities and privileges of institutions of Freedom, regulated only by law.